Being a mostly visual diary of the creation of high quality, historically accurate 25mm/28mm scale terrain

for a refight of the battle waged by the British and Afghans on July 27th, 1880,

in time for its recent 130th anniversary on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010.

Above is a pic of Lt. Colonel James Galbraith, Regimental Colour in hand, alongside Bobbie the regimental dog and some of the other "Last Eleven" survivors of the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment, making their last stand in one of the walled gardens just South of Khig village, a few miles West of the Afghan town of Maiwand.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Form of Kabul River II

I started writing this blog entry on Sunday, December 7th -- Pearl Harbor Day 2014 -- the 73rd anniversary of that momentous historical event -- but unfortunately, right after that, I got sick. Everyone gets sick from time to time, myself included, but this was bad -- the sickest I've been in a couple of decades, and it removed me from any hobby-related activity for the past couple of weeks.

The good news is, I got better! Well... I'm not really 100% better yet, but I'm MUCH, MUCH BETTER than I was, thank goodness. In my experience the only good that comes from being seriously ill or seriously injured, if you are able to recover, is it reminds you not to take incredibly valuable things like your otherwise good health for granted, the way many of us -- and certainly I myself -- generally do. So right now I am very grateful to be just a little bit sick and on the road, hopefully, to a complete recovery.

One thing my improvement has made possible is me finishing up the painting of the Kabul River itself on my Kabul River terrain-board. This step was postponed when I got sick. Prior to that I had glued down ballast and pebbles over the ground-cover on both sides of the river, had added a coat of "Scenic Cement" (watered-down White Glue/PVA), painted the ground-cover, painted the rocks, and also painted over the river itself in light gray in order to very clearly mark off the area to be colored in as "water".

Next up will be doing some color tests with the Enviro Tex Lite 2-part clear resin, adding tints from a few different Acrylic Inks I bought a while ago for that purpose. I had hoped to make some progress on that front over the Christmas/New Year Holiday, but my illness has probably made that impossible. Still, I'm happy I was able to finish painting the river before the Holiday Break has ended.

Here's my usual ton-and-a-half of WIP pics showing the completion -- up to the pouring of the resin -- of the Kabul River board...

NOW, FINALLY, TIME TO PAINT -- HURRAH!

First up: BASE-COATING the rocks in BLACK...

Some touch-ups using Elmer's Wood-Filler to fill in a couple of tiny gaps between frame pieces...

Next color: BASE-COAT of BROWN over everything,

and heavily dry-brushed atop the blackened rocks...

"Honeycomb" the golden caramel color, strongly dry-brushed

over the surface (not over the river banks or river-edges)...

"Fawn" a drab brown-green, dry-brushed on the river-banks...

Finally a strong highlight of SANDSTONE, a light tan, over everything...

Lining up the new 6'x2' board with the previously built pair of 2'x'2 boards...

Painting the ROCKS...

Home-mixture of the "Honeycomb" caramel and black to start...

Lighter dry-brush of "MUDSTONE", a darker sand color...

Final highlight of SANDSTONE, over the rocks and the

river-edges and river-banks, to tie the entire board together...

Light gray "primer" for the river itself, really just to serve as a

clearly delineated guide for exactly where to paint on the water...

I built a piece of "rocky" wood-chip into the ground-cover on the East bank of the river, perfectly aligned with the Southern tip of the Western Spur of the big hill, to make setting the "Charasiab" terrain up on the battlefield a little bit easier...

And now the water itself, painted with ARTISTS ACRYLICS: a home-made drab green made from a mix of YELLOW OCHRE and BLACK with a hint of BLUE thrown in for good measure...

Mixed in some straight GREEN for the darker, "Greener" center of the river...

Some views around the table...

10th Hussars approaching the River...

I'd like to take this opportunity to belatedly wish everyone visiting this blog who celebrates Christmas a very Merry Christmas, and also belatedly wish any/all of my fellow Jews a Happy Hanukkah, and last but not least -- in a more timely fashion -- to wish everyone a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Ethan, another awesome WIP with a ton and a half of cool pics! I'm glad you are feeling better and sorry to hear about your serious recent illness, hears to a speedy and complete recovery. Your terrain boards are looking amazing. The finished project is going to be Epic.

@Michael: I take your jealousy as a great compliment, and thank you for it! Re: the storage issue... well, that, my friend, is an EXCELLENT QUESTION! Truth is those boards spend most of their time stored on my tabletop. At my wife's insistance, before we held the party for my middle child's Bat Mitzvah at our house, I put a pair of very high up (so high I need a serious ladder to reach them) shelves in our garage, where I stored the original 6 "Maiwand Day" boards in 2 triple stacks, with padding between them for protection, so my home-office would not be filled with wargaming terrain boards during the occasion. I am also able to put them up atop my bookshelves, though there's really only room for 4 of them unless I double-stack. Truth is I need to clean out our garage to make room to store them and perhaps even move my ping-pong/wargame table, so my home-office can look like more of an office and less of a war-room -- though in my defense I get a lot of work done in there no matter what it looks like!

@Jeff: I'm glad to say I am even better than I was when I wrote the above post, still not 100%, but getting there. Thanks for the Happy Chanukah wishes -- it's funny how many dang ways there are to spell that holiday name in English!

With all due modesty, I kind of agree with you about the project being Epic! I stopped by my friend's shop and got the carpentry done for another terrain-board -- a simple 6'x2' plain ground-cover board, so I don't need to use one of the Maiwand boards with a nullah carved into it. Besides the resin for the rivers, all that's left is the 4'x2' swamp board I now plan to build for the South-East corner of the table, plus making a bunch more crop-fields and road pieces. Meanwhile I hope to start doing some play-testing very soon on the lay-out as it is now.

MALALAI -- Afghan folk-heroine of Maiwand (click on pic for more info)

BOBBIE -- pet of Sergeant P. Kelly of the 66th (Berkshire) Regt. (click on pic for more info)

Bobbie was separated from his master during the battle and is said to have been present during the final stand of "The Last Eleven" beyond the walled gardens of the village of Khig. Somehow he made it all the way to Kandahar on his own, where he was reunited with his owner. Bobbie returned to England with the regiment and was personally decorated for his service by Queen Victoria. Sadly, the following year he was hit by a hansom cab and killed. Figure is from MIRLITON Medieval accessory range.